Dominic Barton’s summer reading list

July 1, 2015 – by Dominic Barton—The dog days are upon us in the northern hemisphere, as the United States celebrates the Fourth of July and we welcome a new intake of summer associates and business analysts to many of our offices. In addition to enjoying some downtime with family and friends, I hope to use some of my vacation to make a dent in my ever-growing reading list. Clients and colleagues have given me many great suggestions of books to read, podcasts to listen to, and summer events to go to—many more than I suspect I will be able to get through.

The list below is not exhaustive, but it includes recommendations that have come up a few times or with very high praise and are at the top of my reading list this summer.

Non-fiction

The Road to Character (Random House, April 2015) by David Brooks

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 2015) by Evan Osnos

The Wright Brothers (Simon & Schuster, May 2015) by David McCullough

The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014) by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money (Harper, May 2015) by Nathaniel Popper

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Ecco, May 2015) by Ashlee Vance

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Metropolitan Books, 2014) by Atul Gawande

Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will (Portfolio, August 2015) by Geoff Colvin

Thirteen Days in September: The Dramatic Story of the Struggle for Peace (Vintage, April 2015) by Lawrence Wright

Fiction

The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Vintage, April 2015) by Richard Flanagan

Finally, I am modernising the summer reading list this year to include a podcast series: Invisibilia by Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller. In six one-hour-long podcasts, Invisibilia explores the invisible forces shaping our world, from the mechanical (e.g., digitisation, our ability to see) to the philosophical (e.g., where our thoughts come from.)